


Freedom Is Standing in the Light

by Foresmutters_Archivist (Open_Doors)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1980-08-25
Updated: 1980-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 21:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Open_Doors/pseuds/Foresmutters_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Author name withheld by request.</p><p>The mysterious city-dweller on a remote world has devoted his life and wealth to hearing travellers' tales. He rescues a young outlaw from the hills, and his quest comes to an end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom Is Standing in the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous, first published in 1980 in SUN AND SHADOW.

A tree cracked the pavement where the cobbles met the  
wall and grew up as tall as a man. To the man who  
watched from the deep window or the arched doorway  
across the alley, it seemed to happen apart from the  
ebb and flow of Arketh traffic, outside time.

One day there was nothing but the whitewashed wall,  
scarred by overburdened carts and stick-wielding boys,  
then the young tree stood man high, swinging its green  
and silver leaves, throwing its graceful shadow over  
the plaster and the cobbles.

The watcher had no illusions. When a club was needed,  
or a fire, the living tree would be slain; yet it was  
the tree in the alley he watched, not the plantings in  
his water garden.

He had chosen his house because of its location in the  
alley. The hillmen took this narrow way from the north  
gate to the free quarter of the city. Any free man was  
wise to do so. Kahnsmen policed lesser forms of life  
from the wide ways the nobles took. So all the  
travelers from the steppes passed this door, marching  
south for adventure, selling their daughters into  
slavery, bringing their beasts and barter and stories.

It was the stories he bought, paying round silver coins  
for tales of the wild clans who lived up on the edge of  
the world. During the day a succession of small boys  
had cried his need to the passing crowds, pointing to  
the large, pointed ear drawn on his wall. At night he  
visited the inns, ignoring the drinks he ordered to  
listen to travelers' tales as if he believed them.

He was accounted rich without belonging to any clan. No  
one knew who his people were. Some said Southron; some  
said he flew in over the ice and was looking for a way  
back. several times he had made up parties of hillmen  
to guide him on the Edge, and once he had forced them  
to take him clear to the ice, losing half the guides  
and all the animals, but he paid the clans well, and as  
the years passed he was accepted. It was a saying in  
the marketplace that a man might grow ears as long as  
he liked if he grew his purse longer.

This night the sun set in bloom of sulphur and brass.  
The sky faded to a red-brown dusk as the first wind  
blew the fine, fine dust in from the desert. When the  
light was gone and the traffic with it, he left off  
watching the tree and went to prepare his meal. He had  
no servant to intrude on his solitude. He closed the  
door to the house, but left the gate open that lead  
from the alley to the garden.

Water was wealth in these lowlands. He would not hoard  
it. Many hillmen, descending the stone passes and  
canyons from the Edge where water was free, would have  
suffered want of it but for that unlocked gate. At  
first the lowlanders had stolen from him -- a little,  
not enough to make him move -- but he had ignored them.  
Now there was less of it.

When he had eaten it was still too early to go out. As  
the silt sifted down underfoot the air cleared, and he  
waited in the garden, watching the stars brighten the  
dark. Arketh was a moonless world, far out at the tip  
of one spiral arm of the galaxy. Its dark sky was only  
sparsely spangled with stars, so the central knot of  
brilliance that filled one quarter of the dome drew the  
eye to its magnificence. That blaze was the heart of  
the galaxy, and beyond it, obscured by the glory, was  
the other arm, where his homeworld circled its sun.

The watcher's face was lean and dark, without much  
expression. When he heard the uneven rush of running  
feet and tattered figure skidded through the gate, he  
turned to face the intruder without alarm. A long  
knife leveled at his chest he ignored. The runner was a  
youth, scarcely more than a boy, dressed in the long  
woolen shirt of the hillmen. The belt at his waist held  
an assortment of gear and weapons. His brown legs were  
bare to the knee where his soft boots tied. His long  
hair was light, his eyes green or amber, bright with  
total concentration and with pain. The snapped-off  
shaft of a throwing stick protruded from the back of  
his thigh and hampered his stride. Blood ran down his  
leg into his fur-lined boot. Other running feet  
clattered over the cobbles -- the hard-shod feet of  
city dwellers.

"In there," said the watcher, with a slight inclination  
of his head toward the arched entry to the house.

The runner hesitated, the knife still poised for  
action; then he jumped for shelter as his pursuers ran  
past the door, checked, and doubled back. Five of them  
spilled into the garden, giving tongue all at once,  
like a pack of hounds that tolerate each other for the  
sake of the prey.

They were sons of the city's lesser nobility by the  
clothes they wore, too young to be Kahnsmen yet, but  
eager to grow into it. Each of them had a weapon  
pointed at the watcher.

The leader silenced them with a snarl. "A running man,  
where is he?"

Dark eyes studied each face in turn, seeming not se the  
threat. Finally the watcher shrugged.

"You must have lost him. No one but you is here  
uninvited. Search if you wish."

His indifference daunted them. They had no authority.

The leader's voice cracked in indignation as he  
replied. "Be glad this one isn't. He's killed three  
Kahnsmen. He'd as soon cut your throat as give you good  
evening."

The watcher made no reply, and one of the pack plucked  
at the leader's arm.

"He wouldn't go to ground right here in Spenarr; let's  
watch the gate."

With an insolent nod and no apology for their  
intrusion, the leader consented. The watcher followed  
them and, for the first time in many years, closed the  
iron gate and barred it. Then he returned to the pool  
and stood watching the small life there until all sound  
had died away. Gossamer fins fanned the water;  
languorous weeds swayed on the surface.

End part 1

"You can come out," he said at last. "They have gone."

The boy came limping out, his weapon still in his hand,  
but under the watcher's dark eye, it wavered and fell.  
With a sigh, he sheathed it again. His breath was still  
coming fast; his bare chest, where the shirt fell open  
to his waist, rose and fell in a slowing rhythm. Even  
wounded, he moved with assurance. Powerful shoulders  
balanced the long legs, but he was still growing. His  
hands were a little too big for him yet -- square, the  
hands of a doer. He rubbed his forehead with the back  
of his wrist and offered a left-handed apology.

"I didn't mean to bring them down on you. I'll go now."

"You are welcome to stay."

"You'd be a fool to let me. What he said was true. I  
might cut your throat, and the Kahnsmen certainly would  
if they knew you'd sheltered me." The hot, light eyes  
brooked no compromise with truth, but the lips were  
thinned to a bitter line.

"If you do not tell them," the watcher said, "I will  
not."

The boy looked a little startled. He frowned, but  
before he could speak again, the watcher went on.

"How were you wounded?"

"Breaking out of the slave pits. My father told me  
never to turn my back on a dead man unless I'd cut his  
throat myself."

"Your father is a warrior?"

The boy's face closed again, controlling emotion. "Was.  
He's dead."

"A great loss to his people." It was the ritual phrase  
of condolence, but the boy refused it, lifting his chin  
a little.

"No. He was a clanless man. As I am."

On Arketh that was damning. Loss of clan affiliation  
was a death sentence on the Edge -- worse because the  
clanless man died in two worlds at once, flesh and  
spirit. He had no name to survive him in the realms of  
the dead. The boy's control as he spoke showed what the  
loss meant to him, but the mane of bright hair shaken  
back, the level stare, warned that there would be no  
pity asked or accepted.

"And I," said the watcher quietly. "You wound needs  
care. Will you trust my skill?"

The feral stare faded, and abruptly the boy relaxed and  
grinned. "I'd be glad of help. It burns like fire."

Without comment, the watcher led the way to the kitchen  
and silently offered fruit, cheese and bread. The boy  
wolfed the food and watched with interest as his host  
lit the lamps and put two kettles on the fire, one with  
knives, tongs and needles in it. His chewing slowed as  
he watched the preparation and at last he shoved the  
food away.

"I hope I don't lose it when you cut me. It's the first  
time I've had enough to eat in a week. You must be rich  
to have a house this big. Don't you have any servants?"

"No."

The boy's quick eye inventoried the wealth of pots and  
food in the room. Ignoring his wound and a tendency of  
his leg to drag, he got up and made a circuit. Most of  
the utensils would be strange to him, but the frown  
lines between his brows seemed to reflect some deeper  
worry. Restlessly he swung around and studied the  
watcher.

"A clanless man, but rich. No friend of the Kahn's,  
since you put that pack off my trail, yet you're free.  
Why aren't you working in a quarry with your wealth in  
his coffers?"

"He does not know where my treasure is hidden. If he  
kills me he will not find it. The hare may dine with  
the hound if he brings the bone. On the Edge, money  
would not buy equal safety."

"No," said the boy. "We don't enslave stranger; we kill  
them, but you'd be free while you lived. Cities stink.  
My father warned me to stay out of them."

"What does a clanless man do with freedom?"

The boy acknowledged the hit with a deprecating smile,  
but his eyes focused on the middle distance as he  
looked into some interior landscape.

"He stands in the light, as long as he can."

They were quiet then, until the watcher pulled the  
simmering pots off the fire and put them on the wide  
table. The boy helped clear the remains of the meal,  
then eased himself up onto the dark wood and stretched  
out, belly down, pillowing his head in his arms. The  
watcher hung a lamp on a long cord from a beam over the  
table and wrung out a steaming rag with his strong  
hands.

"First I must clean the wound."

"You sound like my father. Clean the dishes, wash  
yourself, pick up this pigpen." There was no real  
resentment in his tone.

The watcher made no answer, but set about his task with  
a light, firm touch. The throwing stick had entered the  
thigh from above, striking down into the tendons at the  
back of the knee. The skin had been torn -- probably  
when the boy broke off the hampering shaft. The boy lay  
still, but the racing beat of his heart had started the  
bleeding again, and the rhythmic tremors of pain or  
chill tensed the muscles in his leg as the blood was  
wiped away.

When the wound was clean, the watcher brought a length  
of cloth and slid it under the boy's thigh above the  
wound. He knotted it tightly, and almost in the same  
motion reached up to the angle of the boy's neck and  
shoulder. At his touch, the tense form slumped into  
unconsciousness.

Working swiftly now, the watcher cut deep into the  
flesh, following the shaft of the stick to find the  
barbed p9oint. It was lodged against the bone and  
slippery in his fingers, but he freed it, rotated it to  
bring the bards up through the incision, and had it  
out. Dark blood trembled and welled from the wound, but  
there was no bright arterial gush. He had fashioned the  
curved needles himself, and now he painstakingly sewed  
the wound shut with thin strips of gut -- muscle, fat,  
and finally the skin. He made a neat job of it, like a  
man who has learned to rely on his own handiwork. He  
was wrapping the leg in clean cloth when the boy came  
swearing and panting back into consciousness.

"I fainted! But it's not so bad now, just aches like  
the devil. Did you put tar on it?"

"Tar?" An incredulous eyebrow climbed the watcher's  
forehead.

"Clan Davin's healer packs a wound with tar to stop the  
bleeding."

"Indeed. I used no tar. Nonetheless, the bleeding has  
stopped. Tell me how to reach your friends."

The boy raised himself on an elbow and shook his hair  
back to look up at his host with narrowed eyes. He was  
sweating and pale, closer to shock than the watcher  
liked, and refusing to acknowledge his weakness.

"I have no friends. Clan Davin might do me a service,  
if I asked. Why?"

"You do not wish to stay in the city."

"Oh. No. But they wouldn't trust you . . ." He ran a  
hand over his eyes, obviously trying to clear his mind  
and come up with a solution to the problem. He had the  
air of being used to solving them.

"You could leave a message at The Hanged Man. Show the  
barkeep this . . ." He fumbled at his neck, pulled  
something dangling on a thong over his head with an  
effort. The supporting elbow trembled. In the very act  
of holding out the object he dropped it and slumped  
over the edge of the table. Quick hands caught him. As  
if it was no burden to his strength, the watcher lifted  
the limp form and carried it through a curtain in to a  
room where a narrow bed and a low brazier were the only  
furniture. The room was warm, a concession to the  
second wind which would blow chill off the Edge as the  
night turned toward morning. The watcher knelt,  
stretched the boy on the bed and pulled a rough woolen  
blanket snug under his chin.

The young face was strong, full of impetuous life even  
in unconsciousness. The lips were even and firm. Long  
straight lashed cast a ragged shadow on the pale cheek.  
The closed eyes had been large and full of light, set  
deep under the sandy brows. The small human ears were  
round as seashells. The watcher reached out one lean  
hand and touched a bruise that stained the cheekbone.  
The hand hesitated, then reluctantly withdrew. No.  
Generations of ancestors who had respected the privacy  
of the mind forbade it. He had broken enough laws.

He rose and returned to the kitchen, removed the traces  
of his surgery, then found the talisman where it had  
fallen under the table. He held it in the light. It was  
bone, cut from the horn of some large animal with a  
loop of wire. He could see the mark of the cutting on  
the back side, almost like a fingerprint.

He turned it over. There was carving on the front, but  
no the usual loops and swirls of Arketh art. This was  
an abstract design. Nine lines of varying lengths  
sprang from a central circle. The design was poorly  
balanced. Some of the lines were much longer than  
others, and yet the length did not increase in even  
intervals. Some of the lines terminated in dots, and  
one had a line across it. He ran his thumb over the  
surface. The work had the look of deliberation. The  
bone was polished and scraped, the fine lines even. He  
considered it again.

Nine lines springing from a circle, arranged in order  
of length. The third line had one dot, the fourth two,  
the fifth four, the sixth was crossed by a line.

Calculations progressed below the level of conscious  
thought as the watcher stood very still in the dark  
room, his thumb stroking the design . . . the diagram.  
One sun, nine planets. The third has one satellite, the  
sixth is known for its rings. A diagram of Earth's  
solar system carved for the clanless son of a clanless  
man. The watcher's face showed nothing. His thumb  
circled the design. Thirty years of search, thirty  
years of waiting and watching. One wild boy whose  
father was dead.

The effort it took to realize the two facts disoriented  
him, like the growth of the tree. Over him rushed a  
river of time, and it was the same river that washed  
other shores less durable. A tree can grow up in a  
night. A son can grow into manhood. The meaning of it  
eluded him, but his hand closed over the talisman, and  
the slow surge of his own blood sounded in his ears. He  
had stopped breathing. The room rocked around him . . .  
but no. Not yet. Air slid back into his lungs. There  
was still work to do. Feeling could come after.

Forgetting the cloak that hung by the door, the watcher  
let himself out into the night, locking the gate behind  
him as if it guarded the one thing of value in the  
world.

end part 2

It was near morning when the boy awoke. The second wind  
was dying. Across the room the dark man sat against the  
wall, his eyes gleaming out of shadow. The look was so  
intense that the boy thought it must have worried him  
in his sleep, yet the man's words, when he spoke, were  
quiet.

"The men of Clan Davin will bring a cart for you soon.  
They will take you out of the city. Many were concerned  
for you."

"For Sarveth. They are glad to have him out of the  
slave pit today. In a year they will have forgotten."  
The boy's tone was bitter.

"You do not value friendship?" The deep voice was not  
pressing, and the boy responded to the detached  
interest in the tone.

"I want no man's friendship. Believing in it killed my  
father."

"Then I will not insult you with the offer of what you  
do not want."

Quick color flushed the boy's face, and his arrogant  
tone faltered. "I didn't mean -- you have been more  
than kind to me, sir -- "

Amusement warmed the deep voice momentarily. "No  
apology is necessary. Like you, I believe friendship a  
hazardous venture. And my cooking may also be one, but  
you should eat, and I have made what I think is a stew.  
Will you try it?"

"I can't repay you for any of this," the boy said  
ungraciously.

"I collect stories. You can tell me the tale of a  
clanless man who died because he believed in friendship  
\-- after you have eaten."

"And if I survive," suggested the boy.

"That, too."

The boy ate almost enough to satisfy his host, then  
handed the bowl back.

"That was good, better than my story, I'm afraid."

"Why?"

The boy's face sobered, and he picked at the hem of his  
blanket as he answered.

"My father was a liar or a fool. What story is there in  
that?"

"You are not a liar, so I think he was not. Did you  
really think him a fool?"

"Not while he lived. He made it seem real. He said he  
came from beyond the ice, from a clan no one had heard  
of. He refused clan standing time and again. Even after  
my mother went to him, he wouldn't bend. He said it was  
against his law."

"Must it be a lie because it did not suit you?"

"No. But the friends he expected never came for him."

"Perhaps they did. Perhaps they could not find him, one  
man alone on the Edge. Perhaps they had to look in  
secret." The watcher's voice was low.

"Secret. That's what he always said. It was their law  
to keep secret. What law is worth a man's whole life?  
He was a great warrior. He could have been the leader  
of a clan, but he would not take a name. So I have  
none."

"You do not know what he had before. Perhaps . . .  
perhaps it was enough to justify the price." The  
watcher's dark face was lowered, his eyes hooded. The  
boy stared at him with lion-colored eyes.

"Not to me. If his friends came to me now and offered  
gold enough to walk on, I would spurn them. They caused  
his death."

"How did they do that?"

"He was always looking for someone, expecting someone.  
When he heard of a stranger, he would travel many days  
to see the man's face. Word came of such a one captured  
by Kahnsmen traveling north. He went after them. I  
wasn't with him. He was getting old. They . . ." He  
cleared his throat and forced it out. "They put a spear  
in his gut. The stranger was too cowed to help him.  
They left him to die. He was gone when we found him,  
and my mother lay down beside him and gave up her life  
from grief. I have sent that coward after him into  
hell, and five Kahnsmen dogs to follow him. I need no  
friends."

The watcher let the silence stretch. "Yet you risked  
the slave pits to free the son of Clan Davin's chief."

"Not for friendship, but to pay a debt. He helped me  
trail my father's killers. And if they ask me to join  
them, I will."

The boy looked toward the window, a gray square in the  
darker wall. He shook the hair back off his forehead  
and breathed the air off the Edge like a wild horse  
scenting water.

"Cities and crowds are not for me with their stale air,  
stale laws. If I shed blood again, it will be for a  
clanbrother who must aid me when I am in need."

"Isn't that friendship?"

"All men know what one clanbrother owes the other. If  
he fails, all men will know it and he will lose his  
name. It is *that* he protects. Friendship . . ." the  
boy's face twisted with pain. "Friendship is more than  
that. In all the years they didn't come, he never  
blamed them."

The boy stretched, impatient, a little embarrassed at  
revealing so much.

"A poor story, sir. I should have told you about the  
three-year winter, or fighting the worm from the ice,  
or how he rode an ice-floe into the camp of Clan Innon,  
but you have heard of that, surely?"

"Traveler's tales -- many of a fair-haired outlaw, but  
none that gave him a name or a place. None told how he  
died . . ." the watcher's voice faltered, ". . . or if  
he was happy."

The boy's keen gaze raked the tall figure, but for once  
the dark eyes were bend on the floor, as if the watcher  
felt he had asked an embarrassing question. The boy  
felt a chill that was not the wind off the Edge. The  
leather thong of his talisman hung down from between  
the watcher's clasped hands. He was gripping it until  
his knuckles showed white.

"He died fighting . . . and I think he was happy, most  
of the time. He didn't grieve, but sometimes he would  
watch the stars, just stand there and watch them, as  
you did in the garden . . . ." From a throat suddenly  
gone dry, the boy asked, "*How long have you been  
asking travelers for these tales*?"

The watcher rose and went to the window, looked out,  
far past the walled garden into which it gave. He said,  
"Thirty years," as if it were nothing, a day, a week,  
the time it takes a tree to grow.

"For him?" It was an incredulous whisper.

"No," said the watcher, like a man who discovers a  
truth he has hidden, even from himself. "Not for him.  
For myself."

Tears rose in the boy's eyes. "If he could have lived  
one year more, could have known . . . You would have  
taken him back to the clan beyond the ice?"

"No. We couldn't go back. I would have joined him," the  
sleek head bent, and the voice was dreamily low, "if he  
desired it."

The boy threw back the cover and limped across the room  
on his bandaged leg. He reached out, hesitated, then  
placed both hands on the watcher's lean shoulders. The  
watcher started, as if the touch pained him, but he  
didn't look back. He didn't move away.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I said what I did about  
friendship. I didn't know. I was wrong."

Slowly the tension under his hands eased. After a  
moment he moved back. A cart turned into the alley,  
loud in the silence. The watcher turned and looked  
again at the tall boy with the bright hair and the  
stubborn jaw. The slightest hint of a smile curved his  
lips.

"I think your friends have come."

Answering warmth brightened the boy's face. "Yes, sir."

They walked together through the house and out the  
door. The watcher helped the nervous hillmen hoist the  
boy into the bed of the cart. They were anxious to go.  
The boy silenced them with an imperious gesture. The  
watcher held the talisman up.

"You could keep it, sir. He carved it himself."

The watcher shook his head. "It was meant for you --  
it's the sign of his clan. I will think of you wearing  
it."

"But I'd like to give you something . . . ." At the  
actual moment of parting he was finding it difficult to  
go, but every heartbeat increased the danger to driver  
and guards. Then the vitality flashed forth, pleasure  
in giving pleasure. "You never asked my name; it might  
mean something to you; it was one of his clanwords."

"I would be honored to know it."

"Spock. My name is Spock. Good fortune, sir. Thank  
you." He laughed. The hillman started the cart with a  
jolt, and the laugh was the only thing he left behind  
him as the clattered around the corner and out of  
sight.

"Spock," said the watcher. He listened until the last  
rattle of the cart had faded away. The quarter was  
quiet. One last star, quick and golden, moved across  
the sky -- a new star, one that had appeared a year  
after his own arrival. The sun came up, spilling  
brilliance over the Edge from the high country the boy  
was bound for, where he was shaping the strong pattern  
of his life. Freedom, he'd said, was standing in the  
light.

For the last time the watcher studied how the tree grew  
so abruptly up into the air, making its place in the  
world. Each branch, each leaf was edged with light. The  
tree's dark shadow was an elongated, angular twin of  
itself that stretched twice the tree's length down the  
wall, but they sprang from the same source, and when he  
walked across the cobbles and broke off a leaf, both  
trees, bright and dark, trembled to the root.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> "Freedom is Standing in the Light" was first published in 1980 in SUN AND SHADOW, a zine dedicated to the "hurt/comfort" theme in the Kirk/Spock relationship, a theme that was very popular among "relationship" fans in the pre-slash era. Reaction to the story was overwhelmingly positive. Many many fans claimed that it was the best piece of fan fiction ever published. A review in UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR 9 (1981) called it "gut-wrenching ...heartbreaking ... [and] unforgettable .... The lyric quality meshes with the legend-like aura of the tale."
> 
> "Freedom" is appearing online with the explicit approval of the author, who wishes to remain anonymous. Ze has stated: "I don't want e-mail. Fans have praised me generously in the past; I hope they will give their feedback to new writers who really want and need it."  
> The poster asks long-time fans who recognize the story not to mention the author's name in public fora, to protect hir privacy as much as possible.
> 
> This story is being posted as part of the "Foresmutters Project", an anarchic effort to make some of the best old Star Trek fanfiction available online. No work will be posted without the express consent of the author or hir estate.


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